Snipe

Another from my sequence of poems loosely related to waterfowl.
Published at Ink Sweat and Tears 11/17



Her wet eyes were green as fenland water.
The twelfth day of August and she could hide
alongside you in her crypsis of hair
until it seemed that you might step on her -
then she'd be gone in a clatter of pans,
a flap of arms, a fluster of car keys.

I recall her whisper though, even now,
when she told me in her own thesaurus
how rain falls, how leaves fall, how there must be
a reckoning and some great final count.
Poor at consolation I took to maths
and numbered all the ways I made her cry.